Analysis of Characters, Conflict, and Symbolism in “a Good Man Is Hard to Find”

Analysis of Characters, Conflict, and Symbolism in “A Good Man Is hard to Find”

The story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a fascinating story about a family traveling to Florida for a family vacation. The story’s main characters are the grandmother, the mother and a baby, the father Bailey, and the two children June Star and John Wesley. On this trip the family has a run in with the other characters The Misfit, Bobby Lee, and Hiram who are escaped convicts headed towards Florida. O’Connor uses literary elements such as flashback and characterization to explore what it means to be a good person. It appears as the only good person in the story is the person the grandmother becomes through her struggle with the Misfit. O’Connor seems to suggest that only through conflict can the “good” be found.

In O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” there are three main Characters. The Grandmother seems to be manipulative: “‘…I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did’”(431). The grandmother seemed to be concerned with only what she wanted. Instead of just simply stating where she wanted to go she tried to guilt her son into not going to Florida. She also states, “The children have been to Florida before”(431). She was seizing every opportunity to change Bailey’s mind. Whenever something goes against the grandmother’s will, she tries to make things go her way. She is egocentric, and obsessed with the her own ideas. She criticizes others and passes judgment on the world for lack of goodness; believes she's good because she is a lady. Though she is not confrontational she has her subtle ways to getting what she wants. Overall there is a lot to be said about the grandmother’s character.

The main conflict in O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is religion. The grandmother seems to be very religious: “Finally she found her self saying ‘Jesus. Jesus,’ meaning, Jesus will help you, but...

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

...﻿The Analysis of the Main Character – the Grandmother
In the story “A GoodMan Is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O'Connor, the grandmother is the central character who grows and changes with the story develops, she is a round and dynamic character. At first, she seems to be an unpleasant, contemptible and selfish old lady who is skeptical about her religion. But in the end, when “her head cleared for an instant,” the grandmother becomes a real believer of God. And she is heading straight to heaven for her final Christ-like act of love the moment before she dies. That is, she moves from spiritual blindness to grace. And that is the method that the author uses to relate her to the theme of the story.
Ⅰ.Grandmother before the moment of grace
First of all, she is selfish and unpleasant. When her family prepares to go on vacation in Florida, she persuades them to go to east Tennessee, where she has relatives. Unable to convince them, she uses the news that a psychopathic killer who calls himself The Misfit is heading toward Florida as an excuse to change her son Bailey’s mind. The grandmother is so self-centered that she just imposes her wish on those people around her.
Also, her vanity and old belief make her an unpleasant character. She always claims to be a lady and thinks much of wealth and social status. When they set out to Florida, she...

...significant setting of the story is outside of Toombsboro, on a dirt road, the time is afternoon since the sky is clear with no clouds or any sun.
"She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest." Flannery O'Connor's "A GoodMan is Hard to Find" is the story of a family's vacation tragically ended by a murderer and his gang. After a meddlesome Mother/Mother-In-Law/Grandmother tries to insist that the family go to Tennessee instead of Florida, it was in fact through her own insistence that prompted the family stray from the main path in search of some false, lost treasure. This deadly decision caused the family to fall prey to the Misfit. Foreshadowing at the beginning of the story hints to the reader that while on their trip to Florida, this family is destined to cross paths with the Misfit. For example, "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it." Through O'Connor's use of characterization, symbolism and the theme that "A GoodMan is Hard to Find", O'Connor's point that society's morals and faith has crumbled is conveyed.
O'Connor's use of characterization shows the breaking down of respect and...

...Story Outline
A Goodman is Hard to Find" focuses on Christianity being filled with sin and punishment, good and evil, belief and unbelief.
Title: A GoodMan is Hard to Find
Author: Flannery O' Connor
Setting:
Characters:
The grandmother; is not godly, prayerful, or trustworthy but she is a troublesome character. She raised her children without spirutuality, because she is not a believer, she is Godless.
The Misfit; is the epitome of the Godless man in a Godless society. He is a killer who is also raised without spirituality as the old woman's children. He is the representative of evil.
Bailey; is the son of the grandmother. He and his wife ignores her, does not care much of her.
The children; children are representative of the breakdown of respect, and discipline, and are consequently a forecast of future generations.
The Plot
Point of attack: The story begins with the typical nuclear family setting out on a journey. Immediately the grandmother, who does not wish to travel to Florida, issues her first challenge to their plans. The entire family ignores her except for the little girl, June Star, who easily reads the grandmother like an open book. She warns Bailey, her son, about the Misfit and his crimes and in doing so, she foreshadows coming events.
Rising action:...

...﻿Jillian Allen
Intro to Lit./Hobson
3/7/2014
“A GoodMan Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
In reading “A GoodMan Is Hard to Find,” most think that it is a very cynical tale, or even a horror story. While to others, it may sketch a reality for Christians to interpret the mysterious ways in which God works. Through foreshadowing and characterization, Flannery O’Connor displays a theme that is unmistakably real. The experiences in life are oftentimes taken for granted, and people cannot find true happiness in the realities of life.
Mary Flannery O'Connor was born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. She then moved to Atlanta with her family, but when her father was diagnosed with lupus, they moved to Milledgeville, Georgia. Three years after her father had been diagnosed, he died; she was only fifteen years old. O'Connor began her studies at Georgia State College for Women, and continued her love of writing that she developed as a child. Flannery O'Connor worked for the student newspaper, a literary magazine, and also wrote stories. The stories won her a place in the master's program at the University of Iowa's writer's workshop, and began developing her craft and began publishing fiction. At age 21, Flannery O'Connor published her first story, “The Geranium,” that earned an award and a contract for her first novel. In 1947, O'Connor received her...

...﻿Matt Chih Chi Kao
English 101
Professor Margaret Shearer
June 1, 2013
"A GoodMan is Hard to Find" Research Paper
"A GoodMan is Hard to Find" is a short story written by Flannery O'Connor, a significant American writer and essayist. Her writing style reflects the ethnic relation in the South and her own Christian faith. The author writes in third person limited point of view to portray the tragic journey of a family who lived in Georgia in 1953. Bailey wants to take his family to Florida, but his mother, "the grandmother" disagrees with him because there's a dangerous criminal named The Misfit who is also on the way to Florida. Bailey ignores the grandmother's concern and headed to Florida. On the road, The kids and the grandmother persuade Bailey to drive them to the see a plantation which the grandmother visited when she was a lady. Unfortunately, the family gets into an accident on the desolate dust road to the plantation. The only thing the family can do is to wait for help, and it turns out that their help is none other than The Misfit and his buddies. The Misfit orders his buddies to take all the family members except the grandmother into the wood and shoot them. Hopelessly, the grandmother calls The Misfit her child and wants to touch him on the shoulder, but this angers The Misfit. As a result, he shoots the grandmother three times on the...

...
3/4/12
“A GoodMan is Hard to Find” Analysis
EN 102
In the short story “A GoodMan is Hard to Find” the author, Flannery O’Connor communicates literary symbols and prominence of Southern culture. Within the story, there are subtle yet important details that make the entirety of the piece as iconic as it is. The reoccurring theme of being a lady and moral codes both are important to the overall concept of the story.
The unnamed grandmother in “A GoodMan Is Hard to Find” considers herself morally superior to others by her being a “lady,” and she freely and frequently passes judgment on other people within the story. She claims that her conscience is a guiding force in her life, such as when she tells Bailey that her conscience wouldn’t allow her to take the children in the same direction as the Misfit. She chastises John Wesley for not having more respect for Georgia, his home state. She then points out the window and gladly says “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” While she proudly sits in the car wearing her dress and straw sailor hat, certain that being a lady is the most important virtue of all. Her hat represents her overall self as a lady and her misguided moral code. The grandmother never turns her critical eye on herself to inspect her own dishonesty and...

...﻿
A GoodMan Is Hard to Find
Abstract
Flannery O’Conner’s “A GoodMan Is Hard to Find”, is an intriguing story of a typical American family from the mid-20th century who set out on a vacation to Florida. The reader is taken on a journey along with the family meeting new people and learning of events that unfold before them. However, after taking an unwanted turn down a winding road, the family comes face to face with a violent criminal. A family vacation turns awry.
Despite her incurable terminal disease of Lupus, Flannery O’Conner was a fictional Southern writer who found short stories like this to be comical yet serious. O’Conner was raised Roman Catholic, and at times found ways to incorporate religion into her stories.
Within this short story, O’Conner used a feminist style of writing. Gender roles are contrasted and very distinct. Often times, she used foreshadowing to set off clues to the reader of what might happen next or even later in the story. Moreover, O’Conner was a brilliant writer depicting scenes of grotesque, deformity, or mutilation most likely that had arisen from her own fight with her lifelong terminal illness.
A GoodMan Is Hard to Find (c.1955)
Flannery O’Conner born in Georgia and a strong believer in her Roman Catholic faith has been known to write short stories in...

...and Morals in
"A GoodMan is Hard to Find"
“A GoodMan is Hard to Find” might just be a closer look at an individual human’s behavior, the moral codes they live by, tendencies and what is really taken into account as being genuinely good. Although it might seem like “The Misfit” might have been the evil person here, and the entire reference to the title of the short story, we can’t deny a closer look at the rest of the characters and their own “evil” ways; the manipulative and arrogant grandmother, June Star, the grandmother’s granddaughter and a nasty spoiled brat, John Wesley, June’s 8 year old brother, who is also spoiled and almost as nasty as June, Bailey, the grandmother’s only son and father of the children who does not discipline his children or have any control of his household, and lastly the mother and the baby, who don’t play much of a role in the story, other than to keep each other preoccupied with one another. The main concentration in the short story “A GoodMan is Hard to Find” is the discussion between “The Misfit” and the grandmother which alludes strongly to what the she considers genuine solid faith, her twisted view about what makes a good person and how it is finally revealed through the character’s behavior and traits that even in this short...